King Kong – What Does it Take to Make a Movie of that Magnitude?

In the early 1900’s, every adolescent minds all over the world had but one obsession, THE KING KONG. This tall mighty creature ruled the fantasy of many as he went about living his own life on an island protecting in a rather daunting manner his blonde infatuation. Borrowed from a comic, this character went to fascinate the world so much that a movie just had to be made. The first one to do any justice to the character came out in the year 1933. The only adjectives that seemed to do justice to the movie were that of excitement, romance, danger, and impending doom plus the superlatives of the same.

It wasn’t until this movie, that the world actually saw the truly limitless nature of film making. And the endless trickery that can be employed to create an escape route from the real world that you so desperately seek. So many techniques were brilliantly sculpted into the making that it was hard to notice yet very quick to inspire. Stop motion was needed to bring the 18ft giant to life, miniatures we used to great effect in some shots involving the jungle creatures and the actors but the one that is least spoken of are the matte paintings. The very story of the Kong would be nothing without the dark, scary, and haunting jungle that he lives in. Could there be a real location in the world were this movie could have been shot successfully yet safely? Most unlikely. So how do you create the illusion of being at a location without actually being there? Matte paintings! But what make these matte paintings truly special is not that they just give a backdrop to the movie but they make the movie stand out even today.

Before we get into the different matte paintings that made the movie, don’t you want to know how movie was even conceptualized? Back in those days, around 1933, the great depression was hitting the film industry hard as it got tougher and tougher to attract audience. Radio-Keith-Orpheum was one of them. To dig themselves out of near bankruptcy, they brought on board the highly regarded producer David O. Selznick from Paramount pictures to revive the creative structure. He was the one who first noticed the dying project creation and was fascinated by what trick cinema can do! This project was then remade into the might KING KONG. Now that you know whom to thank for this movie, let’s move on the topic in focus, the matte paintings.

Matte Paintings from the Kong

This composite photo of many layers of glass art/shot or as we know it, matte paintings, was put together for the purpose of publicity. And it worked like a charm. This image of the men being forced to cross the log after coming face to face with a rather scary dinosaur certainly got the attention of the masses!

It is very much suspected that this shot of New York from the introduction of the movie in reality was a matte painting!

Skull Island. This painting lent authenticity to the arrival of the crew to the location and the perfect backdrop to the native drum beating and Max Steiner’s near perfect musical cues.

Can’t you see the trouble brewing? This scene is most probably the result of a combination of matte art and flaming torch elements into a rear projection.

This scene of the Kong arriving is a result of Williams travelling matte process. Kay on a very limited set is matte into a miniature environment!

All this is well and good but here are a couple of matte shots of what you have been waiting for! The jungle that is home to the Kong.

And here is a peak at the men at work who made all these wonderful matte paintings happen!

Visual effects in this movie is till date some of the best ever seen. And the matte paintings also till date are among the best you will ever see.

Britton Thompson

Not bad. However, you are simply flat out wrong about some of the key points made in this article.
First of all, King Kong is a singular creature whose proper name is “Kong”. There is no acceptable phrase where “the Kong” should be used to refer to him.
Second, King Kong was not a character taken from on an earlier, turn of the 20th century comic book. King Kong was completely a 100% original idea conceived by Merian C. Cooper in 1930 after he had a bizarre dream of leading his old WW1 airplane squadron on a sortie to Manhattan to fight a giant gorilla who was menacing New York City, but was unable to be stopped on the ground because he was standing on downtown office towers.
Furthermore, Cooper was adamant about making his vision become reality, and only accepted the position at RKO on the assurance he would finally get his movie about a giant gorilla made. The only thing that is officially Kong related that came before the movie was the novel “King Kong”. Yet it was released the year before the movie opened, and Merian C Cooper was the book’s author anyway. Lastly, King Kong came out in 1933. Comic books weren’t even invented yet at that time still. It would be another 5 years before Superman was created, and comic books invented altogether with the debut of Action Comics #1 in June 1938. So, basically what I’m saying is that it’s impossible for King Kong to have even been a comic character first since comic books came out in 1938 when Superman was created.